Roseanne portrays a blue collar working middle class family. Roseanne, currently works in a factory, while her husband, Dan, is looking for a stable full time job. They have three children: Becky, Darlene and D.J., all of school age. The series centers around the Conner family as they go about their everyday lives. Roseanne and Dan are constantly stressed as they juggle working full time jobs, raising their kids, and managing their household work and repairs. I think Roseanne was so unique because it was a television show where both parents had to obtain full time jobs in order to make ends meet, much like the majority of the U.S. population. However, two working parents were never really shown on television before Roseanne; it was mostly just the father figure who went to work while the mother stayed home and took care of the home. Because of this specific facet, it can be argued that television was becoming more realistic and based on Realism. While watching this show, I was immediately reminded of my own family, and how I was raised. My dad has always worked full time, my mom only part time, but only so that my sister and I could afford certain luxuries that my parents couldn't when they were younger. The family dynamic in Roseanne almost exactly mirrors my family's, my mom is loud and often sarcastic, while my dad just plays along with it. We constantly make jokes to get through the rough times, just as the Conner family does. Although this show is twenty plus years old, it is still incredibly relevant today as times are still tough and many families are very similar and can easily relate to the Conners. I think by producing and airing shows such as Roseanne, where everyday family struggles are left to play out on the air, really makes it all the more relatable which ultimately attracts a wider and larger audience.
The pilot episode of COPS featured an extensive intro showing live footage of the daily tasks of police officers occurring during one week in Broward County, Florida. The narrator explains how it is about "real people and real crime". The intro shows police officers doing a variety of tasks with varying degrees of severity and danger. The intro depicts the police writing up tickets, seizing drugs, using force to subdue criminals, kissing their significant others, helping sick children, and playing with babies.
The show opens explaining how appealing Broward County is to drug smugglers because of the Atlantic ocean and the Everglades. The cameras follow the Sheriff, Nick Navarro, as he leads a swat team to bust a crack house. He is dressed differently from other officers. He is wearing nicer clothes that you wouldn't expect a Sheriff to wear going to a drug bust. Sheriff Navarro later is seen attending a funeral for a fallen officer who was shot in the line of duty. He explains how that year in 1986, Florida had more officers killed in the line of duty than New York City. He is then followed by a camera to his home where he interrupts his wife's phone call to talk to someone about the chemical fires going on locally. He apologizes to his wife and hugs and kisses her. His home is neat and nice and his wife is sweet and understanding. The camera cuts to an image of the blazing fires raging on television with their poodle laying conveniently in front of it. The scene ends with the couple laying in bed watching the fires on t.v. with their dog. I think the show attempts to humanize the police officers and shows the range of things they do and sacrifice for a community. It also shows that the Sheriff is clean cut and lives a moral life with his wife and family dog. He brings his work home with him and is genuinely seen as concerned about his community. His house is also nice but they play up the fact that he is sacrificing a lot to better the community. I think during a time of violent police actions and many of them dying in the line of duty, COPS really tried to depict the many facets of police work and how they are human too and not all power hungry. It did show that they were upper class, upstanding citizens living well while looking out for the lower class. As seen in the intro when they were playing with African American babies and assisting one African American child by getting them to a hospital. It really reiterates the attempt at humanizing the officers.
Roseanne is a 1980s-sitcom revolving around the lives of the Conners, a working-class family living in Illinois. The show’s theme, as demonstrated in the pilot episode, is that of the daily struggle that many working-class families at this time were more than familiar with. The parents, Roseanne and Dan Conners, are two blue-collar workers with three children to raise and with each day comes a new problem to be solved. The show draws attention to how difficult it can be for working-class families to balance raising children and making money to feed, clothe, and educate those children. In this first episode, we see Roseanne go to work at Wellman Plastics, a factory, while her husband tries to bid on a job that he ultimately does not get. One of the first conversations to take place in the episode revolves around the eldest daughter needing to bring cans to the school’s food drive, but Roseanne says to “tell them to drive some of that food over here,” implying that they, too, are in need of help. We also hear Roseanne asking her husband to save her a detergent coupon in yet another attempt to shed light on the financial struggle the family is facing. The way Roseanne and Dan (but really just Dan) utilize their time was a common theme in the series and in many people’s lives at that time. In this episode, one of them must meet with Darlene’s teacher, get Becky a new backpack, and fix the sink. Roseanne asks Dan to accomplish these tasks because she has to work 8 hours at the factory, but Dan claims to be unable to because he’s hoping to start a new job that day. Roseanne is then forced to leave work early to meet with the teacher and get the backpack, only to arrive home and find out that Dan spent the whole day fixing his friend’s truck. This leads to a marital dispute that many working-class couples probably found quite relatable. They loudly fight about who is supposed to handle which responsibilities, but quickly become a team again when Darlene cuts her finger. This scene and the final credit scene are there to reassure the audience that, even though they fight, Roseanne and Dan love each other and everything will be all right as long as they take it one step at a time. These scenes not only act as a way to wrap up the episode, but also to comfort the people watching at home that are finding the content all too relatable.
The characters in Roseanne are portrayed as a working-class family. There is something unique about this show. The first one I noticed was that Roseanne is the one spouse that works while her husband Dan is either looking for a stable job or staying at home. Normally on some television programs, either the husband worked or both parents worked. She constantly questions her husband’s reasoning for not fixing the sink, not for having a steady job and how she ends up doing everything (according to the pilot). Roseanne displays what it is like for people to have different stable jobs to make it ends meet taking care of three kids Becky, Darlene and DJ who are all school age, and seeing how husbands and wives argue on who does the most work either inside or outside the house. Despite their arguing and yelling at each other about their problems, they managed to come together and help the middle child Darlene when she cut her finger off. The way the characters were portrayed and the topics they talk about on this series are still relevant today because these kinds of circumstances are universal. It was rare for a show to tackle real-life situations and still have some humor about, at the end of the day that’s all that matter. There are families out there that either have one parent that works full time while the other stays at home or both parents are looking for stable jobs to stay financially secured and making sure their kids are ok.
Most of the characters on LA Law were white, educated and well-dressed men working at a law firm. The women on the show were not the bosses and some had more of secretarial roles, but still they were well-dressed and well-educated characters. The office building and interior were tasteful and expensive. The intro expressed how the characters all belonged to a successful firm and had very glamorous lives. However, the show did touch on social issues such as sexism, homophobia, and racism, and it included some of the characters helping to stop the hate. But possibly such a framing could be problematic because it made the upper-class look like they were the ultimate ones who were actually capable of ending the injustice. The show incorporated little things to show how well-groomed most of the characters at the firm were. For example, throughout the episode, some of the characters would say French phrases in a pretentious tone which emphasized their high-ended knowledge. Despite the fact that the characters were educated, when the whole church became incredibly uncomfortable at the funeral because a trans women was talking about the deceased, it showed that the many of the characters were close-minded about social issues. The characters who lived the upper-class lifestyle, anyone unlike them would be something for them to adjust to, making some of them uncomfortable to the unfamiliar. Lastly, having the show have mainly white workers help those in need, like a black woman who has a tumor, presented an image of an educated, white character being the hero. Even in the court room, with the opposing lawyer sounding harsh and condescending towards the sick woman, the main characters at the firm defending her looked like they were playing the savior figure. The image disparity was very apparent and the show presented this idea of white, educated characters being successful and helpful in society.
Roseanne was a sitcom that aired during the late 1980’s all the way to 1997. The show revolved around a working class family that lived in rural Illinois. The show deals with class in a way that was uncommon for television at the time: a white family living in suburbia that was somewhat poor. Though minority families had been depicted in such roles (Good Times), Roseanne was one of the first shows to depict a white family as working class (with Married with Children and All in the Family coming before).
The show differentiated itself from other sitcoms mainly in its characterization of the family members. Typically, in a sitcom the father is a breadwinner, a hard worker dedicated to his family. He tends not to be involved in the children’s lives, delegating that role to the mother, Though John Goodman’s character Dan (the patriarch of the household) does seem to leave Roseanne to deal with the children, he seems to be overall unmotivated and uninterested in the goings-on around the house. When asked to complete some handwork in the kitchen, he says he will later, as he reads his newspaper, noting that he has to put in a bid for a job. This indicates that he is currently unemployed and that work, thus money, is not stable. This is the opposite of a father/husband depiction in a middle class family sitcom.
Additionally, the overall aesthetic of Roseanne is off in comparison to middle class familial sitcoms. The two main characters, Dan and Roseanne, are overweight and dress in a frumpy, laid back manner. Additionally, the characters use a harsh vernacular, with Roseanna using the word “slut.” The characterization goes hand in hand with the family’s class. The family is poor, thus they “must” be uneducated and unkempt. With Dan, he is lazy and apathetic towards his family’s problems. The depiction of the characters is stereotypical of what more affluent people thought of lower class citizens. The idea of weather this was intentional and the shows was a commentary on society or was meant to be an actual representation of the working class is in interesting topic that requires more exploration.
Rosanne is a working class family tv sitcom. This was clear because not only did both parents work full time, which was rare to be depicted at this time, but even though they both worked they still struggled to make money stretch and be able to raise their children correctly. A lot of times in the show they were not able to be right there for their children, or had to call off work to take care of them which was a struggle that only working class families dealt with at the time because many mothers stayed home and therefore was able to be there for the kids whenever they needed them. Within this episode there are small things that are placed to help further reiterate their class. An example of this would be the comment about the food drive at school and the comment that they needed the food just as much as the people they were giving to and limited their daughter to only two cans. The set is also very homey in the way that there isn’t very expensive furniture and doesn’t look perfectly clean. Their clothes are also ones of a working class family, none of them dressed prim and proper in designer clothing. Another thing I noticed is that the kids caught the bus to school instead of being driven by their parents, another hint toward their class. They also talk very relaxed, something that upper class people try to distinguish themselves by using “proper English”. All in all, Rosanne was very monumental at its time but displaying a working class family and all of their issues and problems well and how it aligned with people in that time.
Roseanne portrays a blue collar working middle class family. Roseanne, currently works in a factory, while her husband, Dan, is looking for a stable full time job. They have three children: Becky, Darlene and D.J., all of school age. The series centers around the Conner family as they go about their everyday lives. Roseanne and Dan are constantly stressed as they juggle working full time jobs, raising their kids, and managing their household work and repairs. I think Roseanne was so unique because it was a television show where both parents had to obtain full time jobs in order to make ends meet, much like the majority of the U.S. population. However, two working parents were never really shown on television before Roseanne; it was mostly just the father figure who went to work while the mother stayed home and took care of the home. Because of this specific facet, it can be argued that television was becoming more realistic and based on Realism. While watching this show, I was immediately reminded of my own family, and how I was raised. My dad has always worked full time, my mom only part time, but only so that my sister and I could afford certain luxuries that my parents couldn't when they were younger. The family dynamic in Roseanne almost exactly mirrors my family's, my mom is loud and often sarcastic, while my dad just plays along with it. We constantly make jokes to get through the rough times, just as the Conner family does. Although this show is twenty plus years old, it is still incredibly relevant today as times are still tough and many families are very similar and can easily relate to the Conners. I think by producing and airing shows such as Roseanne, where everyday family struggles are left to play out on the air, really makes it all the more relatable which ultimately attracts a wider and larger audience.
ReplyDeleteThe pilot episode of COPS featured an extensive intro showing live footage of the daily tasks of police officers occurring during one week in Broward County, Florida. The narrator explains how it is about "real people and real crime". The intro shows police officers doing a variety of tasks with varying degrees of severity and danger. The intro depicts the police writing up tickets, seizing drugs, using force to subdue criminals, kissing their significant others, helping sick children, and playing with babies.
ReplyDeleteThe show opens explaining how appealing Broward County is to drug smugglers because of the Atlantic ocean and the Everglades. The cameras follow the Sheriff, Nick Navarro, as he leads a swat team to bust a crack house. He is dressed differently from other officers. He is wearing nicer clothes that you wouldn't expect a Sheriff to wear going to a drug bust. Sheriff Navarro later is seen attending a funeral for a fallen officer who was shot in the line of duty. He explains how that year in 1986, Florida had more officers killed in the line of duty than New York City. He is then followed by a camera to his home where he interrupts his wife's phone call to talk to someone about the chemical fires going on locally. He apologizes to his wife and hugs and kisses her. His home is neat and nice and his wife is sweet and understanding. The camera cuts to an image of the blazing fires raging on television with their poodle laying conveniently in front of it. The scene ends with the couple laying in bed watching the fires on t.v. with their dog. I think the show attempts to humanize the police officers and shows the range of things they do and sacrifice for a community. It also shows that the Sheriff is clean cut and lives a moral life with his wife and family dog. He brings his work home with him and is genuinely seen as concerned about his community. His house is also nice but they play up the fact that he is sacrificing a lot to better the community. I think during a time of violent police actions and many of them dying in the line of duty, COPS really tried to depict the many facets of police work and how they are human too and not all power hungry. It did show that they were upper class, upstanding citizens living well while looking out for the lower class. As seen in the intro when they were playing with African American babies and assisting one African American child by getting them to a hospital. It really reiterates the attempt at humanizing the officers.
Roseanne is a 1980s-sitcom revolving around the lives of the Conners, a working-class family living in Illinois. The show’s theme, as demonstrated in the pilot episode, is that of the daily struggle that many working-class families at this time were more than familiar with. The parents, Roseanne and Dan Conners, are two blue-collar workers with three children to raise and with each day comes a new problem to be solved. The show draws attention to how difficult it can be for working-class families to balance raising children and making money to feed, clothe, and educate those children. In this first episode, we see Roseanne go to work at Wellman Plastics, a factory, while her husband tries to bid on a job that he ultimately does not get. One of the first conversations to take place in the episode revolves around the eldest daughter needing to bring cans to the school’s food drive, but Roseanne says to “tell them to drive some of that food over here,” implying that they, too, are in need of help. We also hear Roseanne asking her husband to save her a detergent coupon in yet another attempt to shed light on the financial struggle the family is facing. The way Roseanne and Dan (but really just Dan) utilize their time was a common theme in the series and in many people’s lives at that time. In this episode, one of them must meet with Darlene’s teacher, get Becky a new backpack, and fix the sink. Roseanne asks Dan to accomplish these tasks because she has to work 8 hours at the factory, but Dan claims to be unable to because he’s hoping to start a new job that day. Roseanne is then forced to leave work early to meet with the teacher and get the backpack, only to arrive home and find out that Dan spent the whole day fixing his friend’s truck. This leads to a marital dispute that many working-class couples probably found quite relatable. They loudly fight about who is supposed to handle which responsibilities, but quickly become a team again when Darlene cuts her finger. This scene and the final credit scene are there to reassure the audience that, even though they fight, Roseanne and Dan love each other and everything will be all right as long as they take it one step at a time. These scenes not only act as a way to wrap up the episode, but also to comfort the people watching at home that are finding the content all too relatable.
ReplyDeleteThe characters in Roseanne are portrayed as a working-class family. There is something unique about this show. The first one I noticed was that Roseanne is the one spouse that works while her husband Dan is either looking for a stable job or staying at home. Normally on some television programs, either the husband worked or both parents worked. She constantly questions her husband’s reasoning for not fixing the sink, not for having a steady job and how she ends up doing everything (according to the pilot). Roseanne displays what it is like for people to have different stable jobs to make it ends meet taking care of three kids Becky, Darlene and DJ who are all school age, and seeing how husbands and wives argue on who does the most work either inside or outside the house. Despite their arguing and yelling at each other about their problems, they managed to come together and help the middle child Darlene when she cut her finger off. The way the characters were portrayed and the topics they talk about on this series are still relevant today because these kinds of circumstances are universal. It was rare for a show to tackle real-life situations and still have some humor about, at the end of the day that’s all that matter. There are families out there that either have one parent that works full time while the other stays at home or both parents are looking for stable jobs to stay financially secured and making sure their kids are ok.
ReplyDeleteMost of the characters on LA Law were white, educated and well-dressed men working at a law firm. The women on the show were not the bosses and some had more of secretarial roles, but still they were well-dressed and well-educated characters. The office building and interior were tasteful and expensive. The intro expressed how the characters all belonged to a successful firm and had very glamorous lives.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the show did touch on social issues such as sexism, homophobia, and racism, and it included some of the characters helping to stop the hate. But possibly such a framing could be problematic because it made the upper-class look like they were the ultimate ones who were actually capable of ending the injustice.
The show incorporated little things to show how well-groomed most of the characters at the firm were. For example, throughout the episode, some of the characters would say French phrases in a pretentious tone which emphasized their high-ended knowledge. Despite the fact that the characters were educated, when the whole church became incredibly uncomfortable at the funeral because a trans women was talking about the deceased, it showed that the many of the characters were close-minded about social issues. The characters who lived the upper-class lifestyle, anyone unlike them would be something for them to adjust to, making some of them uncomfortable to the unfamiliar. Lastly, having the show have mainly white workers help those in need, like a black woman who has a tumor, presented an image of an educated, white character being the hero. Even in the court room, with the opposing lawyer sounding harsh and condescending towards the sick woman, the main characters at the firm defending her looked like they were playing the savior figure. The image disparity was very apparent and the show presented this idea of white, educated characters being successful and helpful in society.
Roseanne was a sitcom that aired during the late 1980’s all the way to 1997. The show revolved around a working class family that lived in rural Illinois. The show deals with class in a way that was uncommon for television at the time: a white family living in suburbia that was somewhat poor. Though minority families had been depicted in such roles (Good Times), Roseanne was one of the first shows to depict a white family as working class (with Married with Children and All in the Family coming before).
ReplyDeleteThe show differentiated itself from other sitcoms mainly in its characterization of the family members. Typically, in a sitcom the father is a breadwinner, a hard worker dedicated to his family. He tends not to be involved in the children’s lives, delegating that role to the mother, Though John Goodman’s character Dan (the patriarch of the household) does seem to leave Roseanne to deal with the children, he seems to be overall unmotivated and uninterested in the goings-on around the house. When asked to complete some handwork in the kitchen, he says he will later, as he reads his newspaper, noting that he has to put in a bid for a job. This indicates that he is currently unemployed and that work, thus money, is not stable. This is the opposite of a father/husband depiction in a middle class family sitcom.
Additionally, the overall aesthetic of Roseanne is off in comparison to middle class familial sitcoms. The two main characters, Dan and Roseanne, are overweight and dress in a frumpy, laid back manner. Additionally, the characters use a harsh vernacular, with Roseanna using the word “slut.” The characterization goes hand in hand with the family’s class. The family is poor, thus they “must” be uneducated and unkempt. With Dan, he is lazy and apathetic towards his family’s problems. The depiction of the characters is stereotypical of what more affluent people thought of lower class citizens. The idea of weather this was intentional and the shows was a commentary on society or was meant to be an actual representation of the working class is in interesting topic that requires more exploration.
Rosanne is a working class family tv sitcom. This was clear because not only did both parents work full time, which was rare to be depicted at this time, but even though they both worked they still struggled to make money stretch and be able to raise their children correctly. A lot of times in the show they were not able to be right there for their children, or had to call off work to take care of them which was a struggle that only working class families dealt with at the time because many mothers stayed home and therefore was able to be there for the kids whenever they needed them. Within this episode there are small things that are placed to help further reiterate their class. An example of this would be the comment about the food drive at school and the comment that they needed the food just as much as the people they were giving to and limited their daughter to only two cans. The set is also very homey in the way that there isn’t very expensive furniture and doesn’t look perfectly clean. Their clothes are also ones of a working class family, none of them dressed prim and proper in designer clothing. Another thing I noticed is that the kids caught the bus to school instead of being driven by their parents, another hint toward their class. They also talk very relaxed, something that upper class people try to distinguish themselves by using “proper English”. All in all, Rosanne was very monumental at its time but displaying a working class family and all of their issues and problems well and how it aligned with people in that time.
ReplyDelete